Latin America: Women

The 4x4 women

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I know what you're thinking: This guy lives in a place where male-female relationships are, and will be, ruled with an iron fist by mustachioed men who sing ranchero songs and wear sombreros.

I don't blame you for thinking that way. In Mexico, where I live, it's one of many stereotypes that have been around for a long time. Despite being repugnant and simplistic, though, stereotypes tend to hold a grain of truth. In this case, it's that a machismo "so deeply rooted in customs and expressions that it has become almost invisible ... [but] is still present in almost all aspects of the daily lives of men and women," as described by Marina Castañeda in her book El Machismo Invisible Regresa ("Invisible Machismo Is Back"), lives on in Mexico.

Even with all this closet machismo, nowadays women are not professional submissives, nor do we men impose our will by firing guns and dressing up as charros. In the last few years, Mexican men have witnessed the birth of a new variation of the female gender: 4x4 women.

A 4x4 woman is equipped to get ahead in different types of terrain at the same time: family, school, work, love, and children, as well as in her own spiritual, physical, and emotional development. She feels a certain pressure to prove she can cover as much territory as possible, with outstanding results at all times. Her approach is often brusque and lacks delicacy because her objective is ultimately to move forward (or up) tirelessly, to eat up the miles without stopping to look back, to overcome obstacles. Or to squash them.

To put it tactfully, men are confused. As children, many of us saw how our parents strove to play the traditional roles of marriage, and that's what we learned. And now, when we want to apply those lessons learned from our parents to the new all-terrain 4X4 woman, we risk getting run over. —Manuel Martínez Torres, editor in chief, Esquire Latin America